"I was arrested Friday night." My pulse is in my throat but I manage to speak through it. "Trespassing. It’s a long story, but basically I was converting an abandoned parking lot into a vegetable garden."
Carter hasn't moved from the door. His eyes are on me. Steady, dark, unreadable.
" I’m telling you this because I understand if you don’t want the MH Group associated with this mess. I mean, you are weeks away from opening this hotel. I can see how much care andeffort you have put into it. Associating your brand… It would be a nightmare…" I stop. Start again. "I totally understand if—"
He moves towards me in a deliberate way.
When he is near it makes me even more nervous, for reasons that have nothing to do with what brought me here in the first place. My voice picks up speed.
"I know this is a bad time to —"
He reaches me.
Both hands close around my upper arms.
My voice stops. Immediate. Like a switch.
I look into his eyes. He has this intense determined look in them that sends shivers down my body.
"Sienna," he says. "Shut up."
And then he kisses me.
22
CARTER
The construction timeline is off by six days.
The hotel manager has been talking for four minutes about it and I've caught maybe two. Something about the subcontractors. Something about the marble delivery from Tuscany held at customs. I try to ask the right question when he pauses.
The truth is that I am distracted.
I've been like this for days. Present enough just to function. My attention keeps drifting to Sienna. Whether she's on-site. Whether she has eaten and hydrated.
Today is worse. Because of Adrian’s call, this morning at six. He wanted me to hear it from him first. He told me about Sienna being arrested and why. He was worried that if I heard it from someone else, the facts would be distorted and I would end up firing Sienna.
He also told me, in the tone he uses when he's not making suggestions, that if I fired her he'd sue me on her behalf.
I told him I had no intention of doing that.
What he described is not a reason to fire someone. It's the opposite.
The hotel manager is talking about contingency timelines and I keep coming back to what Sienna did. The courage and strength she had. And how it doesn’t fit with the image that I had of her.
The hotel manager pauses. He is waiting for my input to a question I didn’t hear, because I am now watching the subject of my fixation enter the lobby.
She comes through the main doors and I know immediately something is wrong. Her posture. The set of her jaw. The way her eyes move across the lobby searching before they set on mine.
She's in jeans dark with soil from the knees down and a plain white t-shirt. She looks like a woman who has come from a battle and is already ready for another one.
She finds me. Crosses the lobby. Stops near me.
"I need to talk to you," she says. "Now."
I look at her face.
"We'll finish this later," I tell the hotel manager. I make a gesture to Sienna to follow me and we go down the corridor.
